Fanfic

21 June, 2009

I keep meeting published authors who wrote (or still write) fanfic before they tried writing original fiction. I know of folks who wrote (write) Star Trek, Buffy, Harry Potter, Sailor Moon, Supernatural and Naruto fanfic. And I’m sure lots of others I can’t remember.

I’ve never written fanfic. I didn’t hear about fanfic until long after I was already writing original fiction. And it never occurred to me on my own to write stories set in other people’s worlds. I’m slow that way.

How many of you write fanfic? What kind? How did you first hear about it?

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41 comments

I write fanfiction as well as working on my original stuff. I discovered fanfiction while waiting for the next Harry Potter books. I still do it, and I am grateful I found it. I know some people stick their noses up at it, but the authors are well-aware they are manipulating other people’s work. Disclaimers galore. It’s a good way to begin writing, because you already have characters and setting. It’s like learning how to ride a bike with training wheels before you do the real thing. I have written fanfiction for Harry Potter, Inuyasha, and Percy Jackson. I’ve read fanfiction for all of the above plus Twilight, Peter Pan, Pirates of the Caribbean, and a variety of other things I’ve randomly chanced on. As you can see, I am quite a veteran at this. Been doing it since junior high (although the stuff back then…pretty bad). I think it gave me a head start when I chose to start writing original fiction, though.

And yes, eighty percent of fanfiction is crap (fifty percent of it doesn’t even employ proper grammar and spelling). But if you dig deep enough (dig REALLY REALLY deep), you can find some pretty fantastic authors. Usually people who are also trying to get published.

I’d been writing my own short stories/rambling attempts at novels before I discovered fanfiction in high school (a lot of my friends were avid Sailor Moon fanfic readers). I tried writing a few “serious” fanfic pieces on a Lord of the Rings site (which apparently still exists, wow – http://www.barrowdowns.com/ ), but I found it a little disconcerting… Anytime I tried to include one of Tolkien’s characters, I felt like I was stealing or that I wouldn’t do the character justice, so most of my fanfics were about characters I made up, who were sort of on the periphery of the events happening in the books. As a fantasy writer, it was good experience to constrain myself when writing about a different world. Since the rules of that world were already set by Tolkien (and people on the site would blast you if you strayed from those rules), you had to learn how to plot and invent characters within those boundaries (for example, flying zombies with magical powers of mind-control, wouldn’t be plausible in a Tolkien novel…).
I didn’t stick with writing fanfic for longer than a year or so, since I wanted to work more on my own stuff, but I feel like I got something from the experience. Among other things, I learned how to deal with criticism. There are some needlessly harsh critics on the internet – but there are also some people who make really valid points about things like a story’s cohesiveness or character motivation. Writing fanfic helped me learn the difference between criticism and critique, and made it a lot easier later on for me to listen to a critique without getting offended or immediately dismissing my reader’s opinion.

I knew a couple of people who wrote fanfic back in junior high (mid sixties)–one girl in ninth grade wrote a Mary Sue Beatles novel. Lots of Tolkien fics later, and Trek. I never did–I was too busy with my own stuff–but in recent years I’ve written several fics for Yuletide, and loved doing it. Very much stretching of other muscles.

I don’t know how I heard of fanfic. Seems like it’s always been around. My first fanfic was a series of little books I wrote based on the Little Rascals movies. Haha, I think my mom thought I was weird. I was like 11. I wrote a whole bunch of them. After that I dabbled in other kinds. It’s fun because you have a built in audience, especially if your writing is even halfway decent. People fawn over your work. It’s also good practice and helps springboard your own fiction. Helps with your confidence, helps you practice actually writing.

I wrote a fair bit of Friday Night Lights fanfic last year just to prove to myself that I could write. It was pretty handy in that I realised that I could. Even better you get immediate feedback and because you are writing someone else’s world it teaches you to be consistant with tone and character’s voices.

I don’t write anymore but I still read the fanfic author’s that are great regularly.

I agree with the previous posters, there are some great fanfic writers but a whole heap of bloody ordinary to awful writers too. I guess it serves a need to tide people over until the next book, episode or movie comes out.

I believe I first read fanfic in 1977. Star Trek. Discovered it at a con. Wrote a story in the Star Trek universe, but it was for me rather than for sharing/publication. Have had poetry published in fanzines. I’m a filker, too, and have written songs based on sf/f/h fiction.

Have you been made aware of fanfic or other derivative works based on your stories? Have you posted on the subject?

Back in college, after I’d been writing seriously for a few years (though I was still a ways away from publication), I tried my hand at fan fiction. There was this syndicated Canadian TV show in the early 90s called Forever Knight, about a vampire who was a homicide detective. I wrote a couple of stories for the FK Fan Fiction mailing list, and they were both fairly well received.

Around that time, I also wrote a story poking a bit of fun at Bruce Sterling’s Shaper/Mechanist stories in Schismatrix Plus, since he felt that fanfic about his own stories was a form of sharecropping, but I never tried to publish it.

I suppose you could call my story “Screwhead” (published at Hot Metal Bridge in 2007) a form of fanfic, but it’s done in a postmodern self-referential way. Almost all of what I write now is original stuff.

I always wrote my own stuff, since I was very young. After a really tough time in my life I stopped to write entirely; I think I went a year without writing a single word. Then I stumbled into fandom (Harry Potter), and wrote a few fics. It helped me get my confidence back, and now I am mostly writing original stuff own my own.

So, needless to say I am very pro-fanfic. I don’t think I’d be writing today if I hadn’t used it as a stepping stone. With that said, it IS kind of freaky if you take it too far. As a writer I am sometimes uncomfortable about what people in fandom does to characters that belong to somebody else.

I discovered fanfic in college, when my roommate showed it to me. I was so intrigued because it is like literary training wheels. I wrote it for a few years, until it became clear to me that my original characters were far more interesting to me than the ones in the fanfic world, and then I stopped writing it. I only ever read/wrote in one world of fanfic, and no other ever interested me, probably because I think that fanfic in this world filled a vacuum that the original creators were leaving in the world, and most of the other big fanfic properties I noticed out there (like Buffy or HP) did not have a similar vacuum, IMO.

I have friends who write fanfic, but I’ve never really had interest. I tried reading some fanfic a while ago, but never enoyed it. My friend says that some is really good, but I feel like it is really difficult for someone to portray a character properly if its not their own creation. Characters make up a large part of the story, and I can’t really stomach the actions and dialog that don’t fit a character properly.

That being said, I think fanfic is a really good way to practice writing, and I know many people enjoy it. I’m not anti-fanfic, I just can’t read/ write it myself.

Concurring with above commenters RE the “training wheels” aspect of fanfic, and I’d add that lately I’ve been writing it to get myself through a confidence-drought so far as my ability to put any sort of words together on a page goes; I’ve got a “real” manuscript languishing in the proverbial trunk, and being able to have some sort of outlet with a built-in audience to reassure myself that I have any ability to engage people with my words has been keeping me from packing it in to become the proverbial bricklayer. Plus it’s been a good exercise for writing to deadlines and owning the raw stuff, since I doubt I could do that in a Real Live FTF Writing Group setting and I bloody well stink at giving coherent crits anyway…

When I first heard the term “fanfic,” on the Internet, I was slightly bewildered by the concept. For one thing, I’m best at making up characters and settings and worst at making up plots, so it seemed completely opposite of what I’d want to do. My little brother, who is mildly autistic, wrote cartoon fanfiction all the time, so I associated it with fixations, and wondered why so many people were so stuck in somebody else’s universes. Then I found a piece of Ducktales fanfiction I wrote when I was 11– it was just embarrassing. But it reminded me that I actually created a lot of fan ART rather than stories for my favorite books and shows when I was a kid. Then I realized that I am a chronic fanfic writer IN MY HEAD– making up exactly what happened and what people said in between the cracks of my stories and movies– but I can’t bear to write them down– probably because they don’t actually have plots, they’re just scenes, but also maybe because I still think of my brother and feel totally too obsessed if I did. And also because I barely have time to write my OWN stories– and run a household– and raise two kids.

One of my original characters is actually, in my head (it’s a detail that will never make it into any published work for various important reasons), related to one of my favorite musicians, and I have written backstorys for this character that involve this famous person and his real life family. I guess that’s the closest thing to fanfiction I’ve actually written down in adulthood.

I’ve never gotten into reading fanfiction, just because I don’t want my own interpretation of characters spoiled by someone else’s I guess. Though some isn’t bad. Fanfic that isn’t perfectly to canon really REALLY bugs me though.

I heard about fanfic about ten years ago, but I never wrote any of my own until I signed up for Yuletide last year. Yuletide was a lot of fun, so I expect I’ll participate again, but outside of that, I haven’t really gotten into fanfic circles. I have friends who write it more frequently, and for a lot of them it seems to be a community thing as much as a writing thing. Being involved with the fanfic community gives them a place to talk about the worlds they love with other people who understand and feel the same way.

I used to write fanfic, but just stopped. I wrote some for twilight, and i had one i was really proud of and had a lot of people reading. But then Eclipse came out, so the story didn’t work any more. I also got tired of the series.
I think that good fanfic is a really nice way to exercise your creativity without creating a whole new world every single time you write. It’s also a nice challenge to develop your own story within the boundaries another author has created.

Julia: My friend says that some is really good, but I feel like it is really difficult for someone to portray a character properly if its not their own creation.

Your friend is correct there’s some brilliant fanfic. I disagree with your suggestion that it’s difficult to write a character you didn’t create. If that was true than the majority of television—where writers are almost always writing characters who aren’t their creation—would not work. Same for films that are adaptations.

There’s fanfic that is way better than the original creator’s work. I would point you to links but those original creators are still alive and would have me killed if they knew I thought some of the fanfic is better than what they write.

I was basically obsessed with fanfiction last summer. (Well, you kind of have to be obsessed to get into fanfic.) I used to write for fandoms like Harry Potter, Stargate, Uglies, Twilight, and Lord of the Rings. I really loved getting feedback for it. The “OMG WRITE MORE” reviews were annoying, but occasionally I received valuable feedback. It’s a great way to improve my writing.

And it’s fun to write stories about characters I love. I loooove getting inside characters’ heads and making them do stuff. And I like exploring all the romantic pairings that the writers never do. (*cough*Shay/Tally*cough*)

And, I admit it, I love the fanfic lingo. (“I read an AU badfic with an OC slash ship, but the OC was a major Gary Stu and the characters were completely OOC. And it was totally PWP.”)

I had never heard of fanfic until about three years ago, when I stumbled on an archive of Tamora Pierce fic — a lot of which was truly appalling, but some of which was excellent. I’ve also read a little bit of Harry Potter fic (mostly by the same few authors whose TP fic I really liked) and some wonderful Vorkosigan Saga fic (again, a large number of stories by a very small number of writers). My standards as a fanfic reader are fairly high: if there’s poor grammar, consistently poor spelling, absent capitalization, dodgy punctuation, or other sorts of blatant idiocy in the first paragraph, I don’t read any further, and though I’m prepared to try any amount of AU-ing, the characters had better speak and behave like themselves, or forget it.

As a fanfic writer — which I also had never been until very recently — I go through brief but intense periods of obsession with a particular set of characters, and then I go off to write about characters of my own for a while.

I have actually become a big proponent of fanfic for the apprentice writer; my own fic was the first (non-work-related) writing I’d shown anyone for years and years and years, and it was the unbelievable ego boost of having people read it and engage with it, along with the other apprentice writers I met as a result, that put me on the road to taking writing seriously again. It’s informative and humbling to look back at the first (rather awful) things I posted and see how much I progressed in a variety of ways over the course of the next few stories. And because plot has always been my main problem as a writer, writing fanfic has been very useful as a discipline: the characters exist, the setting exists, everyone reading is familiar with them, so there is no excuse not to get to grips with making the plot work, and no way I’m going to hold the reader’s attention if I don’t succeed…

I started writing my original stuff when I was really young. I was trying to write when I was in the single digits in age, and then really started doing more when I was around 10-11. The age at which I first read the Lord of the Rings and such. I never thought of trying to put my own characters into other universes, but my best friend and I had very elaborate “let’s pretend” games taking place in the Pern universe, Battlestar Galactica (the OLD BSG), we even tried Dune at one point. We mixed canon characters with original characters and what we couldn’t act out, we wrote down. We were both aspiring fantasy/sf writers, after all.

The first fanfic I wrote was what they now call RPS, Real Person Stories. I paired up friends of mine with the teen idols they loved, in romantic erotic stories. Is it any wonder I turned out to write the stuff I do?

I was writing and selling fiction professionally for years and years before I got into Harry Potter fanfic. I had done a few stories as parodies for kicks earlier in my career (I still read the Batgirl/Catwoman story at cons sometimes) but in 2003-2004 my writing career was in something of a slump. I had a manuscript not sell, there was lots of depressing news in publishing at the time, and I was burnt out on writing for erotica anthologies after the 50th sale or so to those markets.

Then I discovered that Harry Potter fanfic is LIKE CRACK. Both writing and reading it. And the fandom is so huge, write any little Harry/Draco ditty and on Livejournal tons of people would give me feedback! Feedback, from readers? THAT was the real crack. I was so used to writing in isolation and maybe 1-3 years after working on something getting fanmail back (since it takes so long for books to get into print in the traditional manner). Suddenly here were all these squeeing adoring fangirls who really buoyed me.

I also took it as a sandbox where I could play with style. I was writing FOR FUN not work, so I could take chances, play with the tense, the point of view, pace of plot, lengths of stories that aren’t salable, etc. etc. It’s how I learned to write romance, come to think of it.

Now I would still be writing it except I’m too busy writing contracted books! Not in a slump any more.

I’ll be coming out of the closet about it at Azkatraz, a big Harry Potter convention next month in San Fran. I will be teaching a workshop on how the skillz one learns participating in fanfic actively are applicable to a career as a professional writer.

Meanwhile, the list of published and wildly successful authors who wrote fanfic in recent years is growing longer and longer…

I started when I was fourteen, so I have almost been writing fanfic for longer than I have not been writing fanfic! I see a lot of people are saying things like “fanfic is great training for *real* writing”, which is sort of true, because the more you write, the more you learn to write. But it’s sort of not, because writing fic *is* real writing.

It’s unlikely to make you any money, and it has a close relationship with at least one work created by others, and tie-in novels and superhero comics aside, almost all of it is self-published, and I think people devalue it because of that. But it’s real writing, really being written, and even the most derivative, unimaginative piece of fic includes original thought and effort from the fic writer. And the best of it is *really great*, and *free*.

When I was 16 I had a deep crush on a certain British figure skater and day-dreamed about him all the time. Eventually I started making up little stories about meeting him and wrote a few down, never getting farther than the first few pages. It was a lot of fun and helped me discover that I not only had a bit of talent for writing, but really loved it and wanted to pursue it.

That said, personally, I really don’t approve of the so-called “real person” stories. The stuff I wrote was many years ago and very harmless and it was only for me–a big difference, as I see it. I wasn’t publishing it on the internet. My sister told me last year about some fanfic she saw about a famous singer, and it was ridiculous, disgusting, and downright creepy. Encounters in backstage dressing rooms with fans, kidnapped by and impregnanting aliens, etc.

I think fanfic about fictional characters is one thing, and if done right it can be really fun. But writing and publishing on the internet about real people who are still alive and very much in the public eye? Not cool at all, in my opinion. I sure wouldn’t want anyone writing about me that way.

Put me down as another author who cut their teeth on fanfic. I didn’t discover it existed until after I’d written my first attempt at a novel, but I credit the sheer amount of it I wrote over the next couple of years with the difference between my unpubbed works and my first publishable one. Fanfic got me in the habit of writing every day (largely in part of the insta-feedback), and I probably wrote somewhere in the neighborhood of 750,000 words in about two years (plus a handful of original works, too). After I sold my first book, I started writing more original and less fanfic until I’d weaned myself off of it… but I do still *read* fanfic in a few fandoms.

JL, after you called my comment above fascinating, I had to come back and try to actually say something actually fascinating.

Fanfic is the equivalent of what musicians and visual artists are often encouraged to do, which is imitate the style of others on the way to developing their own. And no one thinks it’s weird or a waste of talent for someone who plays the saxophone or sings or plays the piano, to sit down at a party and play a song that someone else wrote, not for money but just to entertain the people around them or maybe just to please themselves.

Why can’t writing be like that? I feel like a lot of the time that’s what I’m doing in fanfic. I’m standing on the street corner with my saxophone, playing the standards, but I’m playing them in my style, and if people stop and listen, that’s awesome.

Some of them have even left a dollar in my tip jar from time to time. The “real gig” is still playing at weddings or in the orchestra or whatever else professional musicians may do–in my case writing the romance novels and submitting to anthologies and doing my baseball columns, etc–but that doesn’t make it wrong or take away the fun of actually writing the fanfic.

I have little doubt that when/if I fall into a dearth of deadlines at some point (when Magic U is done) that I’ll write more of it, too. Just because it is fun, and writing is my art, I like expressing it, I like keeping those muscles in shape, and I like to PLAY.

For me, the primary motivation to write fanfic comes from a sense that the story *could* have been so much better. Or, that there are parts missing. My primary fandom is comics, specifically X-Men comics. And, with 40-odd years of canon and text, things get dropped, contradicted, updated, revised . . . oh, the shenanigans! When the characters I love are not written well by the current author, there are always past writers to re-read. When the writer has a great, fabulous idea — and then doesn’t pull it off well, I want to write out how good it could have been. I wrote a screenplay for the third X-Men movie, after the movie came out, because that movie *could have been so good*, and it wasn’t.

I also agree with Cecilia, in her remarks above, that it’s fun to see how close you can get to a style. I’ve written Veronica Mars fic — I wrote an entire fourth-season episode, and getting the mystery-of-the-week to work in and with the character development, while nailing the voices of these established characters, was fun. I’ve written Buffy fic, and it’s the same there — getting the quirks of the characters and the show’s style is a challenge. I’ve also written L. Frank Baum Oz fic, which is a vastly different style of tone and narration.

All of these things hone craft and skill. In the three years I wrote fic I moved from basic lessons — don’t lose track of your verb tenses — to more advanced ones — how do you show the reader that the character is lying to himself? And the lessons are fast — feedback is immediate, beta readers are decent editors, and everyone will let you know when you screw up. Fanfic is a bit like live theater — your audience is RIGHT THERE, and they will walk out on you.

I use the writing skills I learned in fanfic now, in my own writing. Not least of which is how to gracefully — or at least quietly and internally — accept criticism.

I’ve read lots of fanfic, in more fandoms than I would care to remember. I started in X-Files fandom, because the show wasn’t giving me the comprehensible mytharc I craved. I turned to fanfic to fill in the gaps.

To this day, most of the fanfic I read either fixes things I perceive as weaknesses in canon, or allow me to spend more time in a world I love. I wrote fanfic for a while, but (a) it was OMG SO BAD, and (b) it was while I was still trying to work out if I was cut out to be a writer. (The answer: not so much, at least at this point in my life.)

Count me in with Karen Healey above, questioning the ‘training wheels’ idea. Writing fanfic can be a useful way of developing characterisation and plotting skills, as well as finding a personal style, but it doesn’t have to lead to traditional publication within the mainstream. I know lots of fanfic writers who are perfectly happy to self-publish on the internet — offended, even, if asked when they are going to write ‘a real book’. I think it’s because writing as a hobby/for its own sake has been enormously devalued, but that’s another rant.

I’ve also made amazing friends through fandom, and while fandom is not homogenous, I like both the ‘gift economy’ and the by-women-for-women aspects in the parts I have encountered. (Which is not to say that fandom is all sunshine and roses, nor that all fanfic is readable — Sturgeon’s Law definitely applies.)

Fanfic has also taught me so much about story, about subversive responses to text, about writing in general. Badfic developed my nose for infelicities and weaknesses. Betaing for my friends gave me a ‘safe space’ to practice editorial skills before I ever needed them in my professional life. In-depth thinking about existing fictional worlds has helped me tighten up the worldbuilding of pro writers.

Fanfic hasn’t been my only teacher. But I would be a much poorer reader without it.

Justine, thanks for the post and thanks to Cecilia Tan who in a short paragraph captured my feelings about fan fiction.

It’s a playground, one I’ve enjoyed dabbling in and still read in regularly. The main reason I’ve stopped writing it is that between a fulltime job and book contracts, my time is far too limited.

I agree with Cecilia, Harry Potter fic is totally like crack.

My roots in fanfic go way back to the early fanzine days in the late 70s, when I was just out of college and attending SF/F cons. For me it was the discovery of NEW STORIES!! set in a world of characters I’d come to love…and of course, the lure of well written K/S wasn’t too shabby, either. ::g::

Is pastiche/mimicry fanfic, where you’re almost-but-not-quite writing in a world of Anne McCaffrey? Some rudimentary world-building changes (griffins, not dragons) does not make for original fiction. In which case, from age 12-14, I was writing fanfiction. I didn’t know that’s what it was called, of course… Huh.

And, is it fanfic if it’s not part of a fandom? I was SO dissatisfied with the ending of some book I don’t even remember the title of (I think it might have had something to with Shelley or Keats, but what? Did the characters just read poetry a lot, or were they poets? I don’t recall) that I rewrote the ending on three sheets of college-ruled notepaper, and then slipped the new (happier) ending inside the library dustjacket so the next person who read it (and noticed the papers) could have a happier experience… (I later did the same thing with Gone with the Wind.)

Of course, I was writing original fiction all along, now that I re-read your actual question, so never mind.

I agree with Cecilia Tan. I learned a lot about writing during the two or three years I wrote Star Wars fanfic. My stories are still out there – never to disappear, probably – but that’s okay because it’s not a shameful part of my past or anything. I’m pretty pleased that one of my fics is still in the top ten in the archive at theforce.net.
(And the instant feedback is totally addictive.)

My first attempts at writing were fanfic but I didn’t realize it at the time. I was 12 and was crazy about an American TV show called ‘The Magician’ staring Bill Bixby. My character inhabited that world and interacted with Bixby’s character, having her own adventures. I loved writing those stories.

I’m an obsessive person, and at age 13 I fell very deeply in love with The West Wing. I got involved in the online fan community fairly quickly after the show launched, before there was any real fanfic for the show. It was through this community that I learned of fanfic, and for a while I knew who every single significant author in that fandom was, and what they’d written. The reason I liked it so much, I now know, was that for a couple of years most of the fanfiction easily available online was written by educated, intellectual fans of the show, who often used it to explore issues and character development, rather than by excited fourteen-year-olds.

The result was well-written fiction. I’d say the significant majority of the stuff I encountered when I was fourteen and fifteen used proper spelling and grammar. And a few of the fics were absolutely amazing. Some of the West Wing fan fiction I read was so good that even though I no longer remember the episode, I remember the fanfic.

That being said, I never could get into writing it myself. I think that has more to do with me being repressed about writing than about having any problem with fanfic. Now I’m working on original stuff, and I’m just not interested in fanfic any more, as I’m not really into any fandom. Still, I’m glad I read it, as that was how I learned that ordinary people could be extraordinary writers. I think there’s just something about fanfiction that is inherently more approachable than published works- even as a kid, I didn’t mind just dismissing a fanfic if I thought it was badly written, dull, or untrue in any way.

I write fanfiction. It’s not because I think that I’m a better writer then the writers of the books sometimes it’s because you have a really good idea and you want to share it with other people that feel the same way that you do. I personally write fanfiction becuase I love the characters and the stories of some books so much that I want to try to elaborate and understand their character. I also read fanfiction as I am interested to see other people intreptions and thoughts. I write fanfiction because I find it helps my writing a lot, I am also writing a book and I find that when I don’t have any ideas then writing fanfiction helps .Do you think that if you had heard of fanfiction before writing original fiction that you would have written fanfiction? Also just out if curiosity which authors have you met that write fanfiction?
Thank you for raising this question
Also, I think that I may have met you. You were with the author of everything beautiful and you both were discussing books and stuff on stage. It was before how to ditch your fairy was released and you signed my copy of magic or madness and how to ditch your fairy.
Anyway thank you
if you wish to read anything i have written my username on fanfic net is RealifeBella